Baslinux mailing list

[James Miller <jamtat AT mailsnare.net>]

On Wed, 24 Dec 2003 3aoo-cvfd AT dea.spamcon.org wrote:

> James Miller wrote:
> >
> > Looks like I'll need to update the link at
> > my add-ons page as well,  correct?
>
> Probably not.  The problem was the internal link from
> the BL1 homepage to the download.  As long as your
> link is to the homepage (which is now OK) or directly
> to baslin18.zip, there should be no problem.
>
Ok.  Here's the address I've listed on my add-ons page for BL1:
http://hetteh.iq.pl/bl/index.html .  Trying to follow that link, I get the
message "Error 404 = B/l/ad 404 Not found = Nie znaleziono" - maybe what
Ken was getting in his attempt to find the BL1 page.  The link on your BL2
page, on the other hand, points to
http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/linux/distributions/baslinux/bl1/index.html .
I never saw that address previously for BL1, or I probably would have made
my BL1 page link point to it.  As things stood at the time I composed my
BL add-ons page, I thought the main page for BL1 was located at the
address in Poland that now gives the page not found error.  So, I was
asking if I need to update the BL1 link on my page to no longer point at
the address in Poland, but to the (new to me) page at ibiblio that your
updated link points to?  That seems to me the thing to do.

> > Btw, does BL1 have a new maintainer now?
>
> No.  However, I am sometimes tempted to drop BL2 and
> go back to BL1 myself.  I was able to do so much more
> in the BL1 ramdisk -- I really liked the way it all
> fit together.  The 2.0 kernel and libc5 are so much
> cleaner.
>
> Now that we have a version of AbiWord that works on
> BL1, it would be nice to go back to BL1 and do a word-
> processing package (with preconfigured lpd and gs).
>
> Naturally, I would update the kernel to the latest 2.0
> version and perhaps update to the latest libc5 library
> too.
>
> The biggest change with the new BL1 would be the HD
> installation routine.  It would be similar to the
> installation routine on BL2.  But, instead of putting
> BasicLinux on HD, it would install a minimal version
> of Slackware 7.1 (or 8.1 or whatever) from CDrom or
> downloaded packages.
>
> However, this is just idle speculation.  I don't
> really see it happening.  Although, who knows.
>
Sounds interesting all the same.  Just to check my rather uninformed
understanding of some basic issues involved: isn't it true in principle
that applications could still be written that use libc5 and BL1-friendly
components that would have much the same functionality as applications
written for subsequent libraries/components?  In that respect, isn't the
problem with BL1 maintenance/deployment as much one of lack of attention
by programmers as it is a lack of capabilities in the software itself?
Let's say, for example, that a group of talented programmers were stranded
on a desert (not to be confused with dessert) isle and needed to
reimplement the functionality of some modern software, having only Slack
3.5 on which and for which to build their applications.  They could do
this, to a certain extent - right?  I hope this makes some sense.  I once
had the experience once of living in a remote location with little money
and materials to build and repair things, yet alot of needs for building
and repairing.  We did some rather interesting and inspiring things with
what we had to hand that I would previously have likely thought
impossible, or at least unlikely: one of those scenarios that proves the
adage "necessity is the mother of invention."  Does this sort of thing
apply to software development at all?  Seems to me like sort of what BL is
about, at least.

James